These editorial guidelines are designed to help you understand what we accept and don't accept for inclusion in our press release database. Before you submit to our site, we highly recommend you to read this page first.

1. Press Release Editorial Guidelines: (CONTENT QUALIFICATIONS)

    To Be Qualified For Our Site, Your Press Release:

1. MUST BE AN ORIGINAL RELEASE THAT YOU WROTE. If you work for an author as an employee or contractor and are submitting the press release, please submit the press release as if it was from the original author including his or her name.
2. MUST NOT BE A PRESS RELEASE YOU RIPPED-OFF FROM THE PUBLIC DOMAIN OR BOUGHT. If you did hire a ghost writer to write your press releases, you MUST have an EXCLUSIVE LICENSE that *only* allows your name to be associated with the press releases produced for you. Do not waste your time or ours by buying press release packs that have non-exclusive licenses as we reject those press releases. Why do we do this? #1) It makes you look like a fraud because you're putting your name on someone else's works that already may have hundreds or thousands of other authors who already put their name on the exact same works and #2) We do not want more than one copy of any press release in our directory.
3. MUST NOT CONTAIN AFFILIATE PROGRAM LINKS. See Section #3 below.
4. MUST BE informative and share your unique expertise. Include news, tips, strategies, techniques, case-studies, analysis, opinions and commentary in your press releases.
5. MUST HAVE proper English, spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization and sentence structure. While we know there is a variation in what is considered "proper English," we ask that you at least be consistent within your press release. Your press release must also be proofed and double checked for accuracy. If English is your second language -- we strongly suggest that you have it proofed by someone who has English as their native tongue before submitting your press releases to us.
6. MUST NOT contain pornography/adult material, hate or violence-oriented, suggest racial intolerance, advocate against any individual, have insulting-obscene-degrading tone, or contain excess profanity.
7. MUST NOT contain information on: hacking/cracking content, bomb creation, support for terrorism/ radicalism/ religious fanaticism, illicit drugs or drug paraphernalia, steroid use or advocacy, weapon/ firearms/ ammunition/balisongs/ butterfly knives or brass knuckles, or the promotion of hard alcohol/tobacco-related products or prescription drugs.
8. MUST NOT contain any content that is a violation of any law, be considered defamatory, libelous, or infringes on the legal rights of others.
9. MUST NOT be a submission of the exact same press release as one that you already submitted. Some authors have submitted the same press release multiple times with only a few words changed in the body -- we reject these and ban authors who engage in this practice.

2. Press releases Editorial Guidelines: (FORMAT)

• HEADLINE:
  Our Headline MUST Be In Upper and Lower Case Letters With The First Letter of Each Major Word Capitalized.

1. If you submit your HEADLINE in all CAPS, we will change to "Upper and Lower Caps."
2. It is ok not to capitalize common words such as "a" - "the" - "to" - "for" etc...unless you want to. We accept these either way.
3. Please do not put QUOTES around your entire HEADLINE. This makes very little sense to us. If you want to use a quote or an apostrophe to call attention to one word or a phrase, this is ok, but the entire HEADLINE must not have quotes around itself.
4. Refrain from excessive repetitive punctuation in your HEADLINE. One exclamation "!" or question mark "?" is enough to make a point.
5. We do not allow HTML tags of any kind in your HEADLINE.
6. We do not allow spaces in your HEADLINE before you begin your HEADLINE. In other words, your HEADLINE should begin with the first word flush to the LEFT of the HEADLINE submission box.
7. We do not allow your AUTHOR NAME or any WEBSITE URL to be in your HEADLINE.
8. Please do NOT repeat your HEADLINE in the PRESS RELEASE BODY.
9. Your HEADLINE must not be keyword stuffed (too many redundant keywords used over and over again), but rather should read as a natural language HEADLINE that any human could easily appreciate. Do not over-optimize your HEADLINE please.
10. The recommended length of the headline is a maximum of 60 characters.

• YOUR FULL AUTHOR NAME:
  You must include your first and last name as the author of the press release.

1. Your AUTHOR NAME must have a First name and a Last name.
2. We do allow "First name - Last initial" or "First initial - Last Name."
3. We do not allow two initials for your AUTHOR NAME.
4. Your First and Last name must begin with a Capital Letter.
5. We allow company names to be your AUTHOR NAME.
6. We do not allow email addresses to be your AUTHOR NAME.
7. We do not allow adjectives or nouns or descriptors to be part of your AUTHOR NAME.
8. You will include your title after your AUTHOR NAME if you hold a doctorate-level degree (Dr., MD, DDS, PhD, etc.)
9. We do not allow religious titles before or after your name.

• PRESS RELEASE BODY:
  Must be a minimum of 200 words and no more than 3,500 words. For us, an ideal press release size is 250-700 words.

1. Please do not repeat your HEADLINE and AUTHOR NAME at the top of the PRESS RELEASE BODY. We will remove it.
2. Copyrights must be at the bottom of your press release. If you put it at the top of your press release, we will move it to the bottom of the press release body.
3. If you include a REPRINT RIGHTS statement in your press release, it must be at the BOTTOM of your press release. If you put it at the top, we will move it to the bottom. Keep in mind our Publisher Terms of Service when you write your reprint rights statement as we will not accept press releases that have REPRINT RIGHTS statements that conflict with our posted Author Terms of Service.
4. If you sell hard in the PRESS RELEASE BODY by including your URL or product pitch or blatant self-promotion, we will toss your press release without notice.
5. The following HTML TAGS ARE ALLOWED in the PRESS RELEASE BODY:
   » <b>BOLD</b>
   » <i>ITALICS</i>
   » <u>UNDERLINE</u>
   » <br> is used to force a hard line return. Use this HTML tag to prevent our system from trying to wrap your short sentences together into one paragraph.
   » <pre> and </pre> To make a text table look right.
   » <blockquote>TO INDENT A PARAGRAPH</blockquote>
   » <XMP> and </XMP> are used to display HTML code if you want to show the HTML code but not have our system interpret your code as HTML commands.
   » <OL> and <UL> tags to create a NUMBERED LIST or a BULLET POINT list. See the Essential HTML press release link below for further instructions on how to implement if this is your first time using these tags. These are OPTIONAL tags as you can always just left justify a numbered list or * asterisks for bullets and it makes your press release much simpler to reprint.
   » HTML TAGS NOTE: Be sure to CLOSE every tag that you OPEN. A common mistake that an author will do is OPEN a BOLD tag and then forgets to CLOSE it causing the rest of their press release to look BOLDED when they didn't intend for that.
   » We do allow ACTIVE website URLs in the body of your press release. Please read the section below on "WEBSITE ACTIVE LINKS / YOUR URL" for a detailed explanation of what is and is not allowed.
6. The following HTML TAGS ARE NOT ALLOWED in the PRESS RELEASE BODY:
   » <p> and </p> are not allowed anywhere in your press release. To accomplish the same thing as the <p> tag, just make sure there is one vertical space between each of your paragraphs. Our system interprets vertical spaces between paragraphs as an indication that the paragraph has ended and we insert behind-the-scenes the <p> tags so you don't have to.
   » <JAVASCRIPT> is not allowed in any form.
   » <IMG SRC> Image tags are NOT allowed.
   » FONT SIZE changes or COLOR tags are NOT allowed.
   » <H1>, <H2>, <H3>, etc. tags are NOT allowed.
   » The <HR> horizontal line tag is NOT allowed.
   » Microsoft Word Smart Quotes are NOT VALID HTML code. Do not include them in any of your HTML statements (or your press release in general if you can help it).
7. Please do not submit press releases with excessive HARD LINE BREAKS. A hard line break is when you use the HTML <P> or <BR> tag to force a carriage return rather than allowing each line to wrap naturally. We may either reject or convert any press releases that are sent in with hard line breaks. It's ok to force a hard line break when you're making a small list of items but it's not ok to arbitrarily force hard line returns on every single line at a certain character width.
8. At the very END of your PRESS RELEASE BODY, please help us by removing any excess vertical spaces and do not include any HTML tags that would create or force the creation of additional vertical spaces after the end of your PRESS RELEASE BODY.

• WEBSITE ACTIVE LINKS / YOUR URL:
  We allow a maximum of 3 "Self-Serving" Links/URLs, active or inactive, in your press release. A "Self-Serving" Link/URL is a link/URL to a website that you own, control or has an interest in.

There is a total active link limit of (6) active links per press release, i.e.: A maximum of (3) "Self-Serving" active links that you have a relationship with and a maximum of (3) active non-self serving links.

1. Check your links before submitting to be sure they work. Your press release may be rejected if your website links do not work.
2. You can use HTML code to make your link active.
3. Your links may NOT contain a file to be downloaded of any type.
4. We do not accept press releases that have the same ACTIVE link more than once. Do not submit duplicate identical URLs.
5. We do not knowingly allow any URLs in any of our press releases if your website engages in questionable SEO practices -- we may reject your press releases.
6. We do not allow press releases which have strategic keyword anchor text links in the body to your domain that do not add informational value to the press release. If you put all 3 of the active self serving links that we allow in the body of your press release, we will reject it. Any use of anchored text links to websites that you own should add value to the press release topic rather than stand out as an obvious abuse an anchored text link. The goal with this policy is to be a good netcitizen by only allowing press releases that add value with the anchored text links rather than for pure SEO reasons.
   Example: Within your press release, you link the word "bird dog" to a press release that you wrote about bird dogging. This is a good example of an anchored text link vs. linking the same text to your home page as it doesn't really add value.

• EMAIL 'MAILTO:' LINKS:
  We highly recommend including a link to your website but do not advocate including a mailto: or email link to your personal or work email account. Spammers will abuse it. Better to just include a website URL and let potential customers find your email address on your website.
   
• PRESS RELEASE SUMMARY:
  Every press release must have a 2-5 sentence press release Summary. The purpose of the PRESS RELEASE SUMMARY is to give an abstract or description of the benefits that your press release delivers.

1. If you don't know what to put in your description, just use the first paragraph of your press release.
2. We do not allow HTML tags of any kind in your PRESS RELEASE SUMMARY.
3. We do not allow blatant self-promotion in your PRESS RELEASE SUMMARY.
4. We do not allow your AUTHOR NAME to be in your PRESS RELEASE SUMMARY.
5. We do not allow any website URL or Email Address to be in your PRESS RELEASE SUMMARY.

• PRESS RELEASE CATEGORY:
  Please choose the best category based on the theme of your press release and not the theme of your business.